


Subjacent

by recrudescence



Category: Inception
Genre: Age Difference, Kink Meme, M/M, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-24
Updated: 2011-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-23 00:44:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recrudescence/pseuds/recrudescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Cobb’s sweet little son grows up and makes a move on his fake uncle.</p><p>Inspired by <a href="http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/19632.html?thread=46132400#t46132400">this prompt</a> at the kink meme. Contains a pretty sizable age difference (17/41); also includes Arthur/Eames as both a background and overarching pairing, which makes more sense than it sounds like it should.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subjacent

One of the best things about Uncle Arthur is that he doesn’t mince words, but he doesn’t backstab either. He’s good at stating things plainly without making anyone hate him for it.

“I’ve known your dad since I was your age,” he says. “No, he doesn’t always make decisions I agree with, but I’ll always respect his determination.”

“Right, and you were perfect when you were seventeen.”

He laughs then, not at all self-conscious. “Not exactly. I was a rude little shit.”

That doesn’t seem to match up with his demeanor at all. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously. I messed around with the wrong sort of people, dropped out of school, got my GED when I was fifteen. Then I met your dad when he needed lab rats for one of his projects and I answered the ad.”

“So that worked out okay anyway.”

“Sort of. I lied, said I was a year older than I was. The problem was, I had trouble passing for eighteen until I was about twenty-five. But I talked Cobb into taking me on anyway.” When he smiles, his face is all laugh lines and mischievous eyes, and you can believe it.

There are plenty of things about your family’s past you don’t know, plenty of things your father isn’t comfortable discussing now or maybe ever, but Uncle Arthur gradually imparts more bits and pieces as you get older.

You take them as the truth since you have no reason to doubt him. It’s another one of the best things about him, and you’ve been tracking those for a long time too.

\---

The garage used to be a workshop for whatever your dad got up to back in the day, but now it’s part storage room and part makeshift home gym. You go in to blow off steam when you’re bored or frustrated, which means often. Your sister says you Hulked up from spending too much time in there, but she never cared much for sports in general, always reading instead, always racking up straight A’s while you just brought home report cards spattered with B’s, C’s, and comments like “James needs to concentrate” and “Often speaks out of turn.”

Uncle Arthur knows jujitsu and taught you basics when you were still small, still likes testing you to see how much you remember. He almost always gets you pinned even though you’re bigger than him now, and he always helps you back up with a handshake and a gentle slap on the shoulder no matter how much havoc all that grappling manages to wreak on your lower half.

It’s all very honorable of him.

Honor, as far as you’re concerned, _blows_.

But Uncle Arthur is completely poised each and every time, even though you’re bright red and busy imagining dozens upon dozens of dishonorable ways the round could have ended instead.

It doesn’t really bother you that he’s your uncle-by-association. You got over that little moral barrier early on. There are plenty of other people you’d be better off lusting after, people who aren’t related to you even by association, people who aren’t almost a quarter-century older than you, but once you decide you enjoy something you can’t quite bring yourself to give it up. Like the time when you were ten and shoved an entire Oreo in your mouth, then took a huge gulp of milk and ended up choking because you didn’t want to spit anything out.

It’s as good a comparison as any for the way you operate: trying to hold onto something delicious even if it kills you.

The dreams started when you were twelve. The reality started when you were thirteen. You went wandering into the bathroom, half-awake, and didn’t realize until you had your toothbrush in your hand that Uncle Arthur was showering. He’d slid the door open a bit, blinked at you and opened his mouth like he was about to ask if you were sleepwalking.

You’d fled before he could say a word, but you still remember it all. It was the first time you’d seen a naked man, at least in person, and he’d been stunning, hair black and gleaming under the spray, water streaming over his skin, soapsuds on his shoulders and his cock soft and delicate between his thighs. Even though you only had the most fleeting glimpse of him, you can still picture everything.

Neither of you ever acknowledged that it had happened, but you thought of it so often, played out different ways the incident could have gone, maybe, if you’d stepped into the shower with him and let your instincts take over. You didn’t leave your room for at least another hour or two that morning.

And you remember Eames, the two of them both working with your father on something or other at various points. That was when Uncle Arthur didn’t come on his own to see you so much, mostly with Eames instead. When he was alone he would stay in the guest room again, but if Eames was with him then they’d stay in a hotel and you didn’t like that even though you didn’t know why.

One time, they’d both been over and Eames had ducked out to the veranda for a smoke, but when you passed by you hadn’t seen any smoke at all, just an empty ashtray and Uncle Arthur’s hands clenched around brightly striped shirt fabric, his head tipped back and his grin lighting up the night. Eames’s head ducked against his throat, the flexing of fingers through fingers, the glint of the moon on silver.

And you understood and hated it, but you took that smile and stored it away, studied it like a religion over the years.

\---

“How long now?”

“Almost six months, still no luck…you’re the last person I could think…no room for negotiation. I didn’t want to bring this down on you.” He sounds so tired, despondent, even though you’re not quite close enough to catch every last word. “He told me the best thing I can do is forget him…don’t know what else—”

“What happened?” you demand, walking through the door like you’ve only just arrived and haven’t been pressing your ear to the window for the last few minutes. Uncle Arthur looks up, serious and stone-faced. Your dad gives a solemn little shake of his head, a wordless _not now_.

You ignore him. “No, what the fuck happened? Did he _leave_ you?” You can’t remember ever seeing Uncle Arthur look so downtrodden. No one should ever make him look that way, no one should even be able to _think_ of turning their back on him, and as much as you’ve resented Eames in the past you were at least able to accept that the two of them made each other happy. “Fuck him.” Spitting out the words.

Uncle Arthur’s face gets a little more lined, a little more rigid. It’s one of the only times he’s actually looked his age, a full twenty-four years your senior.

“James,” your dad begins, but Uncle Arthur steps in front of him and looks up at you.

“We did something stupid and your Uncle Eames took the fall for both of us.” Quiet, hard, saying it like that’s all you need to know and all you’re going to hear. You feel like you’ve been socked in the gut.

When your dad jerks his head towards the doorway, you leave without a word, too stunned to stumble over an apology.

\---

It’s not exactly a surprise when your father says he’s taking some time off from the university to handle some kind of business overseas.

He tells you to be good, that he’s called Philippa at college and let her know, that he’ll try and keep it short and stay in touch as much as possible. Uncle Arthur will be in charge while he’s gone, but he’s sure that won’t be a problem because of course you won’t cause any trouble for him.

It’s a big deal. Your dad isn’t really one for traveling; you can count on one hand the number of times he’s gone on any kind of business trip, can still remember how big of a wreck he was the first time both you and Philippa left for summer camp.

“And tell him you’re sorry,” he says mildly. It wouldn’t even sound like an order to an outsider. “That wasn’t your business.”

You sigh and roll your eyes, but you do find Uncle Arthur later and say that you’re sorry.

He just waves you off and goes back to unpacking. “You never get too old to make bad choices.”

\---

It really isn’t your business, you know that, but with just Uncle Arthur for company the subject is bound to come up eventually. To your credit, you at least try to be subtle about it.

“Eames isn’t sick, is he?” You’ve never been able to call him Uncle, even though everyone else does.

Uncle Arthur scarcely looks up from the papers strewn over the kitchen table. “Don’t worry about it.”

“He’ll be fine,” you say, doing your best to be encouraging even though the words drag their way up your throat like shards of glass.

“How many girlfriends have you had?” Uncle Arthur asks then, apropos of seemingly nothing, voice clipped.

“Two,” you say. “Not counting stuff like holding hands in grade school.”

His lips twitch. “Boyfriends?”

“None, really. Just messing around.” Chances are, he already knows this, since he was the logical choice when you were freshly fourteen and fighting your way through a sexuality crisis and desperately in need of a shoulder to cry on. He almost certainly doesn’t know he was the cause of it.

“Want some unsolicited advice? Don’t ever let anyone suffer for something that’s your fault.”

You feel sheltered and thickheaded, but he doesn’t seem to be expecting an answer, so you go.

\---

When you were little and it was storming outside, you used to crawl into bed with him sometimes while he was visiting. He would hold you close and let you hog the covers each and every time.

When you started growing seemingly an inch a month, he would try to lift you after every hug and then give an exaggerated gasp, almost happy, almost wistful, and demand, “When did you get too big for laps?”

You’re seventeen now and the two of you are sitting at the kitchen island in the middle of the night.

Normally, he’d try to shoo you back to bed, but it’s not a school night and he looks like he could use the company.

“Is that a screwdriver?” you ask hopefully, nodding at the tumbler in his hand.

He snorts and sips at it. “A virgin screwdriver, technically. Cobb never keeps the good stuff in the house.” He sets out a second glass. “Want one?”

“You take care of everyone,” you say as he pours. It slips out of your mouth as if you’ve been waiting to ask without even knowing it. “Who takes care of you?”

He doesn’t say anything, but against the curve of the countertop there’s the pale strip of skin at the base of his ring finger and he doesn’t need to answer. You want to ask him if that helps, if that makes it any easier, but you can’t. It isn’t your place.

“How long…” You hesitate. “How long do you think it’s gonna take?”

“Your dad’s going to do his best to sort things out. He still has connections, even now. We’ll see.” Too stoic, too flat, trying to cover up so many things you’re still too small to understand.

“I know what you did,” you blurt out, since you need to let him know you can understand _something_.

His eyes are narrowed, but expressive as ever. Amused, now. “Really.”

That makes you backtrack. “I mean, kind of. Before. I know Dad got in a shitload of trouble when Mom died and you were one of the only people who stayed with him through the whole thing.”

Very slowly, without a sound, he places his glass on a coaster. “That’s what he told you?”

“He didn’t tell much. But Philippa started looking stuff up online a while ago and she told me. Then I looked, too. We both…” You pause. “He almost didn’t get to come back home. But you helped him.”

You don’t know what Uncle Arthur does for a living, not exactly. Everyone waves it aside, playing it off as military intelligence work too tedious to be discussed, with Eames doing something similar for England, something that keeps them both stationed all over the place. Besides the references in those years-old articles, you don’t have much to go on. Just headlines about the Cobb case, the tragic tale of professors turned dreamtech virtuosos, two of only a handful of daredevils charged with fussing around with some kind of federal technology that could only be accessed thanks to the right connections, the right skill sets, and the right levels of insanity. Still _can_ be accessed, maybe, but that part doesn’t interest you and you have no illusions of anyone ever telling you about it anyway. Your father would probably hit the roof if you ever asked.

Uncle Arthur leans on his elbows, long fingers resting against lithe arms. “Something like that. It’s not my story to tell.”

“Just because nobody talks about it doesn’t mean we don’t know about it.” You want to touch him, but you put the juice tumblers in the dishwasher, keeping your hands safely on other things. “Is that like what happened to Eames?”

He smiles, but it’s forced, a marionette’s grimace. “Something like that.”

“He’ll get out,” you say, since you don’t know what else to do. “Dad’s gonna do everything he can. Eames is just, like, in jail or something like that, right?”

This time, the smile Uncle Arthur gives you is genuine, but still exhausted. “I would tell you you’ll understand when you’re older, but I hope you never have to.” And he opens his arms to you, never giving any indication of whether he can feel your blood burning through the frayed cloth of his t-shirt, and holds you for a long time that way, like the world might swallow you up if he lets you go.

You breathe in the scent of his skin, soap and basil and bergamot, and wish you were brave enough to kiss him.

\---

When you’re not in school or at practice, you try to liven things up for him. A lot of the time, this means goading him into sparring on the mat-padded garage floor. It keeps him active and at the same time keeps him from being mopey, or from trying to put up a brave face and look less mopey, or from furiously working away at his phone or laptop with frown lines etching their way across his face and shadows hanging themselves under his cheekbones and eyes.

He makes fun of you, tries to trash talk without getting too profane even though he knows you have no such reservations, and gets you pinned the first time without even breaking a sweat. It’s clear his heart isn’t in it, so you step up your game and end up winning the next round. But he doesn’t take the bait the way you hoped he would; instead, he sighs and grips your hand as he gets to his feet. When he ruefully squeezes your shoulder, he tries to make light of it all, claiming he’s just having trouble focusing. “Maybe I’m getting too old for this, what do you think? I might fall and break a hip, you never know.”

He’s forty-one, more fit than most of your friends, and probably has a degree in ass-kicking from some top secret ass-kicking institution run by Jedi in the wilds of Siberia. “Yeah,” you agree. “Gotta watch out for that. I think we’ve got some of Grandma’s extra canes lying around if you want one.”

Uncle Arthur makes you promise to find him a flowered one with a matching cane cozy, then goes into the bathroom to clean up a bit.

You slip into your own room, step out of your shorts, and jerk off thinking of fucking him there on the garage floor while he’s pinned and pleading.

When you reemerge, he’s perched on the couch, his work spread all over the coffee table and his reading glasses on his nose. “What do you want for dinner?”

“Doesn’t matter. I think there’s pot roast.” You sit on the other end of the sofa and he makes room for you even though you’re probably a sweaty, smelly mess. It suddenly doesn’t seem like enough, the cursory wash-up you treated yourself to after thinking of what it might be like to slide his legs over your hips and slide yourself into him. You give your shirt a self-conscious sniff, then whisk it off, ball it up, and toss it towards the stairs.

It comes out of absolutely nowhere when he says, “I can’t believe how grown up you are now.”

You’re probably making a face because he pushes his glasses onto his head and snorts. “Let me get in my one requisite corny remark, then you’re home free.”

And he stares at your face like he’s still getting used to seeing it, which is kind of gratifying and kind of uncomfortable even though you doubt even someone as quick on the uptake as Uncle Arthur can tell how recently someone’s been fantasizing about him.

You aren’t sure what he sees when he looks at you, never have been. You know from pictures that your mouth and nose look like your mother’s, but your eyes are almost as dark as Uncle Arthur’s and you’ve got dinge-colored hair that soaks up sun and turns more gold than your father’s in about two seconds flat when the weather warms up. He ruffles it with one hand. “Right, that’s enough of that. You’re gonna need to at least put your crap in the hamper if you want me to cook you anything.”

You bite his finger without thinking about it and immediately decide a shower is in order, for the good of both sanitation and yet another goddamn jerkoff session.

By the time you finish, he’s nowhere to be found and neither is dinner. When you look into the guest room, he’s curled up on his side, dead to the world. He mutters an apology when you tentatively say his name, tries to sit up, but you slide up beside him, ease into his arms the way you used to, a kid scared of storms and solitude. Philippa was always too rational for fear.

“Just a couple minutes, then food,” he murmurs, and you let him drift into sleep again and pretend he’s yours, wondering if he’s doing some pretending of his own.

You and Philippa have done enough research to know that people like Uncle Arthur don’t dream.

\---

While he sleeps, you kiss him. Closemouthed, careful.

He turns without waking, seeks out warmth and lets himself be held, and you can imagine it’s real.

Then you go into the kitchen to see about pot roast.

\---

The thing is, it really is for his own good. More often than not, Uncle Arthur sucks at sleep. There’s no other word for it. If he isn’t simply neglecting to go to bed at a decent hour, he’s either neglecting sleep entirely or catching it in fits and starts in the most impractical places.

You cough. “Trouble getting to bed?”

He sounds muzzy. “Yeah?”

“C’mon, you can’t pass out here. Dad does it sometimes and he always ends up bitching about how he can’t turn his head right the next day.” You’ll never understand how anyone can crash on the living room couch for more than five minutes without waking up and realizing what an awful idea that is, but Uncle Arthur has been doing it with mindboggling regularity for the past week.

He follows you in a daze. Messy-haired, wearing a sweatshirt and lounge pants, he’s more likely to pass for an aging grad student than a veteran of whatever branch of the armed forces he actually hails from. “Not _my_ room,” you stop him when he seems ready to let you lead him right through the door.

Your room, with a tangle of game controllers on the floor, dirty clothes cluttering up every corner, and posters slapped haphazardly all over the walls. You don’t need him wandering into your own personal teenage wasteland only to get cold feet and bolt right back out. However, you dart in long enough to grab a couple things and shove them into the pocket of your pajama pants, just in case, and then go back to ensuring he makes it to the guest room intact.

He pulls his sweatshirt over his head, sprawls out like he doesn’t realize you’re even there.

“You’re kind of making me worry,” you tell him flatly. Each time your dad calls or texts, you tell him that things are fine and don’t ask any questions since you know by now that he’ll tell you anything he deems worth the telling. Judging by the way Uncle Arthur’s been walking around in a stupor lately, he doesn’t have much more to go on than you do.

“Can’t have that. I’m the role model, right?” Cracking a smile for a moment, stretching both arms over his head and not seeming to notice the way your eyes drink in the limber lines of his body. “I haven’t been a very good one, have I?”

“I think I can tolerate you anyway.”

He gives you a little shove. “Thanks, smartass.”

You shove back, feigning indignation. “Dude, I’m trying to have a moment here.”

Then he gets all serious. “Dom loves you and Philippa more than anything in the world. Don’t forget that just because he’s off doing me a favor.”

Like you’re gonna forget something just because it’s not right in front of your face. “Yeah, I know,” you say, since this isn’t the time for joking. “I really do know.”

He lets you lie down beside him then, like it’s no big deal, and you watch some crime show marathon until he falls asleep. When you turn off the TV and wind an arm around him, he doesn’t seem to notice. You press your luck, drawing him in closer, letting your nose graze the base of his neck. It would be easy to let yourself drift off this way, but you’ve been hedging your bets for too long. Uncle Arthur is dead to the world once again, warm and familiar and looking like home.

You have your mouth parted against his nape, almost too lightly to register the touch at all, and that’s when he snaps awake.

It happens all at once, without a sound aside from the yelp you utter when his head nearly collides with your nose. The next thing you know, he’s twisting away from you as if he’s been burned.

When he looks over at you, all the agitation seems to leave him at once. “Jesus, I’m sorry.” He’s sighing and raking back his hair, which has a temperamental relationship with his forehead at best. “I—”

Then either he decides he doesn’t want to finish that thought or you decide you don’t want to know, but one way or another it ends with your fingers against his mouth and his mouth half-open and unmoving, dry against your fingertips.

“It’s fine,” you tell him. “It’s fine,” and you don’t let him twist away again because if you do you might never have another chance at anything. So you kiss him, closemouthed, careful, awake.

\---

His eyes go from furious to horrified to confused, a thousand things all at once, none of them good news for you.

And you still can’t tell him anything, like how you come home from school and see him either working or sleeping and it’s like he’s a zombie and it scares the living shit out of you because he’s always been so controlled and composed and _there_ , as long as you can remember. You’re not blood relatives, but you’ve grown up knowing he would always be around. You don’t want to imagine any alternatives.

“I don’t—you—you’re not taking care of yourself.” It’s the most vicious sort of circle: you know you should be doing something about that, you want _him_ to know, but you don’t know how. “Let me help.”

You can’t stand seeing him like this, want to confess just how long you’ve thought of him, how many pairs of underwear you’ve ruined on his account, but that would probably just make all your perverse ambitions drop dead in their tracks.

“Uncle Arthur,” you say quietly, “it’s okay. I’m serious. It’s gonna be okay.”

And there’s a look on his face like maybe he wants to think that, like maybe all this time he just needed to be told.

\---

It happens in a kind of controlled frenzy, a hushed blanket of _please_ and _it’s okay_ and his long, deft hands stroking your shoulders as if this is just another round of sparring that’s drawn to a close. His mouth is soft, slow, counterpoint to the frantic way you go about undressing him, touching him, tracing fingers over the tip of his cock and relishing the gasp he can’t stifle in time. You’re not sure if he got hard in his sleep or from you but it doesn’t matter; he needs it and he’ll let you give it to him.

“Have you even—”

You thumb open the cap. “Since I was fifteen, yeah.”

“Fifteen,” he echoes, sounding a little disbelieving. Uncle Arthur probably looked all of eleven when he was fifteen, but you got your growth spurt early on and easily passed for a few years older.

You’re holding him too hard, kissing his mouth until you can’t breathe, and it’s more of a surprise than it should be by the time you’re coming over your bellies, slick and too soon. His nails bite into your back and his hands smooth your hair when you screw your eyes shut and bury your face in his shoulder, like it’s you who needs comforting now.

“Jamie…” His voice is guttural, still gentle somehow, and no one else calls you that, no one has for a long time.

“It’s all right,” you’re stammering, floundering and determined and incredulous all at once. “Let me…I can still,” and kissing him all over again before he can protest, licking and stroking your way down his body until you taste him on your tongue, feel him straining up and trying not to, and then you slide a finger into him and he’s crying out, shattering under your hands. “Is that okay? Is it good?”

Babbling at him, when your mouth is free enough to allow for it. Wondering how long it’s been since anyone touched him this way, if he’s touched himself. Wondering if Eames treats him like this, if he turns him over, bends him over, if he learns every last inch of his beautiful body like it’s the first time all over again and leaves him strung out and fucked out and exultant when they’re done. If he’ll ever touch him again at all.

Uncle Arthur lets you scrabble for the rest of the contents of your pocket, lets you kick your way free of the pants themselves. He accepts your touches on him and inside him and curses like a sailor as you move in him and the bedframe slaps a lewd tattoo against the wall. He most definitely doesn’t call out anyone’s name. You’re positive that you’re both listening out for it, making sure.

And later, some indefinite time later, he presses his palms against his eyes and you’re prepared to fear the worst, but both hands are dry when he finally drops them. “I…”

You still don’t want to hear. Both your arms slip around him and you know you’re babbling again, nattering on about how much you’ve wanted him and how much you love him, but still not daring to look up as you let him stroke your back and sigh against the side of your face. “You must miss him a lot,” you hear yourself say, since Eames might not be there but his presence is heavy in the room all the same.

It’s a dumb thing to mention, since it’s not like Uncle Arthur’s about to say no. He probably thinks you’re a moron for bringing it up. But he just sinks back into the pillows with his eyes tightly closed.

“Every day.” So calmly, like he’s announcing the weather. “All the time.” And your insides twist into a knot, but he returns your kisses quietly and touches you with light hands, almost sorrowful. “I’m sorry, James. You weren’t supposed to be dragged into any of this.”

Whatever happens, you won’t let him get dragged down alone. Uncle Arthur mentioned once that your father doesn’t have a hero complex so much as he has an antihero complex and you think you’d be all right hitting the genetic jackpot in that area. “You’ll be okay here,” you say to him. “You’re ours, you’re mine, you’ll be okay.” Kissing him over and over, promising earnest-stupid-sincere promises. “We’ll keep you safe. I’ll keep you safe.”

You don’t know what you’re capable of and you’re sure you aren’t cut out to be anyone’s hero, but you mean every last word.

Uncle Arthur sleeps before you do. He’s restless this time, tossing and twitching but never quite waking. You don’t know what any of it means, but he’s not the skillful, bright-smiling Uncle Arthur you’re used to, with birthday presents and perfect hugs and a gun under his coat—Philippa saw it once when she was eleven, but either Uncle Arthur started hiding it better or stopped carrying one altogether when he visited. That or she just made it up; Philippa always could convince anyone of anything, no matter how absurd.

It’s hard to swallow the realization that, under all the composure and certainty, part of him is still a mouthy little kid, talking his way into something too big for him to grasp. Only this time, maybe he has to talk himself back out and he never thought quite that far ahead. Maybe you’re following the same track without even knowing it.

And you think of what he said before, that you never really outgrow some things. But as you settle in beside him, you decide you aren’t sure you like knowing that.

You don’t want to think he might be right.


End file.
